How much money does an Uber / Ola driver make?

This is a discussion on How much money does an Uber / Ola driver make? within Street Experiences, part of the Buckle Up category; 2 weeks back I was traveling in a OLA Mini cab. While I was doing conversation with him I found ...

2 weeks back I was traveling in a OLA Mini cab. While I was doing conversation with him I found that they can make any no of trips. No min/max restriction. He needs to pay a 10% commission to the OLA. He can switch off his mobile device if he does not want to make any trip too.

In my opinion, there is no real difference between the e commerce companies ala FP/Myntra/Jabong and the cab aggregators i.e. Ola/Uber. Inducing purchase of products on a platform by funding subsidies in the name of discounts and incentivizing drivers to log more miles by paying bonuses while not collecting a commission cannot be a sustainable business model. At present its a turf war between the two biggies Ola and Uber to see who can grab more drivers thereby directing more traffic to their respective apps and this will last as long as the funding party keeps going, which it may given that India is the only big market which is still growing. Having invested billions, the funds will have to wait for an opportune moment to exit and that will only happen if the valuations keep going up, up and further up. In the meanwhile, the current transport ecosystem should be able to absorb more such driver-entrepreneurs in the medium term given the sorry state of public transport in every large city barring the capital. It is the very government which has failed in delivering a world class infrastructure which has, via these very failures, created these crevasses where such enterprising folks can step in and make hay!

Imagine this:
- Companies (OLA, Uber, etc.) are using VC funds to provide subsidies (in the form of discounts etc.) to customers & incentives to service providers in a bid to gain market share. They believe that once a large chunk of the market share is with them, they will reduce the subsidies & incentives to move into profits.

- It is obvious that there will be other VC funds who will pump money into another company at this stage (when OLA, Uber, etc. are scaling down subsidies & incentives) to simply win over the market share.

Drivers made money in the range of 50 k during the initial times. I once remember talking to a ola driver and he said the company is offering him a incentive of 5 k daily if he completes five rides. These incentives were either very less or non existent nowadays. Ola and Uber have amassed considerable market share and splurging investors' money on drivers does not make sense now. I am pretty sure they earning would have dropped nowadays for the drivers.

That's a good amount of money. I might be missing something but I have a question, If the drivers are earning money, where does Uber get its earnings from?
And does Uber do anything like a health checkup for the drivers they hire?

The aggregator takes its cut - but this a notional value. It is not making any money - it is actually bleeding. Because on top of the fare, they are currently paying an incentive per pick up to the car owner. It is a fairly complex system - the incentive varies according to time and the class of car - UberGo, Uber X or Uber Black.

When demands are high - what kicks in is the Surge Factor; the surge is anywhere between 1.2x the normal fare on busy days to 4x when demand skyrockets like on 31st night.

I think this Cab Aggregator driver salary is highly exaggerated topic.
I spoke with few Uber drivers (I drive to and from office daily) and understand that they get 100 additional bucks apart from trip cost during peak hours ( 8-11 & 5-8 PM). During weekends this becomes 200 additional bucks per trip.
On any other part of the day its the bill amount which they get.
Now, they have to clock minimum 90 hours in a week as per contract.
For airport trips also they get some additional amount but if they do not get back trip to city, it incurs them loss.
I could not understand the bifurcation in case of surge pricing.

All these amounts were quite higher 6 months back and they also got good bonus/ house hold equipments/ mobile phones as perks if their service, feedback was good but all this has stopped now.
The say they earn about 15,000 -18,000 odd salary a month and variance of 20% .

Again, may times the drivers are not the owner of cabs and the guy leasing them cars take commission being a driver partner at these cab companies and he can be earning quite a bit depending upon the number of cars which he has rented.
All in all, perception I get is, its more work, guaranteed business (consumer behaviour change) and better money.

While travelling in an Ola last month, I found out that my driver owned 5 taxis.
Yes 5, you heard it right. All working for Ola.

He told me that one of his drivers was ill, and therefore he was driving that day. He also told me he worked for ITC and that he made close to 3 lakh/month (profit) just through his 5 Ola affiliated taxis.

Till now, i'd only had drivers in the cars, no owners. I guess in Delhi, its more common to find multiple cars, owned by a single person ho hires drivers to drive them.

Anyway, its such a lucrative source of income w/o many hassles.
The best part are the flexible hours and the independence that you have.

I believe most of us agree that VC money is being burnt by way of bonuses and extra payments for staying connected. Similar referral schemes are being dished out on the customer front as well. I must have paid only for about 20-30% of the rides I have taken on Uber, rest all have been by way of referral money I earned.

That said, here's a wonderful article on how bonuses are dished out to drivers for staying put with companies like Ola, Uber and Taxiforsure: Article link.

I am atleast happy that cab companies like Uber are spending money on their own customers and drivers rather spend thousands of crores to get prime TV ad and newspaper ad slots to acquire more customers. A very welcome strategy in India.

Today I saw an advertisement by Uber on BEST bus in Mumbai which says "Use your T-Permit car to earn upto Rs. 90,000 per month."

I actually got the same ad in the Promotions tab of my Gmail! <Sample of where I saw it below> Wonder what Uber's targeting strategy really is. But then again, with that much of funding, do you need an accurately mapped strategy? or does pure spend power suffice by bombing everyone with your ad message?

I have contradicting versions. All the drivers I have interacted, approximately 8 till now including Delhi and Kolkata, have all expressed that they make not more than 20-30k in a month. And drivers in Kolkata were extremely unhappy with Uber and their business model.

I think Kolkata is not the best place to do this business because of the excellent ( by comparison with rest of India ) Taxi network and then the auto network for micro transportation within locality. Having stayed in more or less every metro in India , none even come close to the affordability and ease of a taxi ride in kolkata , not even close . As such not many will feel any reason to hail uber or ola unless they are making an urgent ride to airport from home and cant be bothered to flag a taxi down on the streets . But for the regular folks on a trip to the mall , I cannot fathom why they will pay so much extra for ola etc except air conditioning . The same however for example doesn't holds true at Delhi , good luck flagging a regular taxi down ( I am not sure they even run anymore ) and the autos are highway robbery .